Modern technology, especially AI keeps changing the way we work. That applies also for IP experts. One example: monitoring trademarks, looking for similar trademarks, or checking on already registered trademarks is time consuming and exhausting. Increasing numbers of IP registrations make the field of registrations even more complex.

Today, AI can help us with these repetitive tasks. There are AIs which are fed the data of patent and trademark offices all over the world. They can monitor the status of certain trademarks, check on similar trademarks before registration and what’s most valuable, they can identify infringing registrations. Some can even calculate a degree of similarity of trademarks ranging from 50-100%. And the more often they do a task the better the results will get as they use machine learning to improve their accuracy. This does not only work for trademarks but also patents, design patents and copyrights.

Development in machine translation even accelerates this development as it is possible to use data from foreign countries without a human translating it beforehand.

There is no need to fear that IP experts will lose their jobs though, there is still enough to do for them. AI can only deliver data, but they cannot analyze the data in a way necessary to derive legally useful information. This is because patent law includes a lot of phrases that cannot be interpreted with mathematical logic only. Ethical and practical considerations are necessary to apply the law.

That’s where IP experts come into play. Freed from the time consuming task to monitor registrations, they can fully evolve their ability and expertise in filtering, analyzing and assessing the results. That will make IP experts’ work all over the world more efficient as they can focus on the more challenging tasks.

The above mentioned AIs will help IP experts to save time and focus on the essential to help their clients to develop efficient IP strategies and to crack down on counterfeiters.